Identification and Suppression of Majority Surface States in the Dry-Etched β-Ga 2 O 3 .

Surface treatment after dry etching is vital to enhance the surface quality of the material and thus improve device performance. In this Letter, we identified the majority surface states induced by the dry etching of β-Ga 2 O 3 and optimized surface treatments to suppress these electrically active defects with the improved performance of Schottky barrier diodes. Transient spectroscopies suggested that the majority traps ( E C -0.75 eV) related to divacancies (V Ga -V O ) were enhanced in the concentration of 3.37 × 10 14 cm -3 by dry etching and reduced to 0.90 × 10 14 cm -3 by the combined means of oxygen annealing and piranha solution treatment. The trap evolution is supported by the suppressed donor-acceptor pair radiative recombination related to oxygen vacancies, the improved carrier transport (negligible hysteresis current-voltage and unity ideality factor), and the reduced surface band bending. These findings provide a straightforward strategy to improve surface quality for the further performance improvement of Ga 2 O 3 power diodes.